Cemetery

(Garden in repose)

A light frost blooms on terracotta pots
Summer’s geraniums stand white-faced,
shocked stiff, unable.
Spider knitting hangs lank too,
then glistens briefly
at the first shaft of sun.
Our three squirrels grumble
busily at the empty feeders,
offering unimpressed stares
towards my steaming coffee mug reflection.

The garden has become a cemetery
of unburied lifeless visitors
that shared my salad days
of mottled warmth and dew
but now pay the price,
prone, sacrificial, destitute.
Copper leaves dance no longer,
matted between barren stems
crucified by this sudden chill
twisted, caught like rotting fish
in cobweb nets.

There is no life here
in these slatted shadows,
there is no pulse.

© Graham Sherwood 12/2016

Nether Muse

(More insomnia).

Ebbing from safe anchorage,
willingly as if hypnotised
I enter the soporific darkness
in search of words containing light.

As the Angelus suffocates behind me
and an invisible contagion
of night daemons quietly close ranks,
here I am plagued by music
from the deafening silence.

My pupils dilate to saucers
desperate for sanctuary,
from this deprived inebriation.

Then an unlikely fissure,
a needle’s eye, of
brilliant black light,
a polished ebony altar
bearing my words.

© Graham Sherwood 11/2016

Cohen Haiku

poet leaves his stage
soft words still ring in our ears
cry hallelujah.

© Graham Sherwood 11/2016

Haiku-ween

All Hallows Eve ends
old bones return to the grave
skeleton keys lost


© Graham Sherwood 11/16

Struck

(In memory of the late PC Martin Fletcher)

What am I bloody well doing here?

Bussed up

all the way from Northamptonshire,

we’re knackered before we start,

the overtime will be handy mind

with our Ben off to college.

Keeping the peace in a sodding field,

bleeding daft.

I’ve never seen so many police horses,

stay out of their way, big buggers.

Here we go, it’s kicking off,

it’s funny really,

we were only chatting to these blokes

half an hour ago,

they’d come nearly as far as us

now its fisticuffs!

© Graham Sherwood 11/16